the smallest things make me happy....

a friend of mine that i loved tremendously died last winter in a horrific accident that may have been suicide. about a week after i found out of his death, i received a giant bag that weighed close to 75 pounds, delivered to my doorman by a messenger. there was no card attached, but inside the bag there was every single conceivable and necessary gadget to outfit a kitchen if you were someone who cooks. i called the messenger service to find out who the package was delivered from...and of course, it wrenched me to the core of my heart - it had been picked out and bought a month earlier with delivery scheduled to surprise me for my birthday since my friend knew i was trying to move.

as everyone knows, when it rains, it pours. my friend died. my apartment got ransacked and i was robbed of every penny saved for the move and then the worst thing - an amazing apartment was promised to me (they were even willing to take my Section 8 Housing Voucher!) and a few days before i was supposed to move in, i found out the residents of said apartment weren't moving as planned due to a delay in the job transfer they were taking.

so, more and more of my life was put into a bag or a box and dragged around the corner from my old apartment and locked into a little storage closet at manhattan mini storage (you can store your mini here, but you'll have to keep your maxi somewhere else!) i couldn't bear to look thru the birthday gift bag. it sat in storage with the memories of Grandma Hulit and some of my most cherished, if not (but probably!) cheesy possessions.

of course, i finally pulled it all together, thanks to mom and jim, and got myself out of that old little apartment without a kitchen. sure, it was in the best address area of new york city. chelsea, right across the street from anderson cooper's home, now that's worth walking home every day just to see him on the street. it was also right nextdoor to sandra bernhard's apartment. she's really unattractive, but of all the famous people you encounter in nyc (why is she famous, by the way?), i saw her every time i left my apartment and every single time, she said hello and chatted with me while we waited to cross tenth avenue. i give her extra credit for that. i feel like i stalked anderson cooper for the two years i lived across from him and he still doesn't call, doesn't write and doesn't love me for me.

yesterday i finally went down to get stuff out of storage. i am missing a few essentials in the new place, like kitchen towels, a non-stick saute pan, etc. i knew i had towels in storage, but the rest was a gamble. i discovered the huge gift bag and realized it was all stuff i don't need and won't miss, so i dragged it back to bed bath and beyond (which i hate, as a store and as a shopping experience). it turns out as much as i dislike bb&b, they have a very liberal return policy in place, atleast in nyc. i didn't have a receipt. some of the items didn't even have tagging or barcode on them, but the customer service desk was able to look up every single item, and there were a lot of them - from placemats (8 gel mats, 2 silver metallic lacquer, 2 red metallic lacquer) to some sort of wire organization system that i couldn't figure out a use for or how to put it together (large rack and extra hooks plus 9 seperate pieces of add on shelving). granted, they take 25% restocking fee off of whatever they give you back, and everything is always marked down so you only get clearance pricing, but i still got around $100 to use for some things i didn't have and can't justify spending on right now.

the biggest item to put a smile on my face yesterday is my new 10 inch RED teflon coated sautee pan. i finally can cook eggs! what a lovely thing! granted, i try not to eat eggs, as they always make me sick, immediately after ingesting them. but i do love a good mushroom and cheese omlet when i want one. and last night, i wanted one. i have wanted one since coming back from wyoming, but i'm loathe to ruin my good copper clad cookware with something so horrible to clean off since the only dishwasher in this apartment happens to be named wadeo.

of course, there was another item that has been driving me up a short wall since moving in here - i lost my cheese grater somehow...perhaps i still own it and haven't uncovered it yet, but i'm starting to think not. having not had an apartment and/or a kitchen for nearly 5 years has allowed many many things to slip away. that's why for $5.99 i can now easily grate my cheese. which is very important as i have a beautiful block of imported parmigano regianno cheese in my fridge and i have been grating it with my vegetable peeler which isn't really the right way to do it....and when i say imported, i mean, i had to walk to the subway, go all the way down to 77th and lexington avenue to d'agostino's to buy it. apparantly, as i live in the famous area known as "el barrio" italian cheese is not available to the locales. on the other hand, i can get excellent oaxaca cheese in 32 different renant combos. now that food network did a show on oaxaca, i plan to start buying and using it in the near future. i'll start slow, i don't want to live another tofu like experience, but live and learn, right? they say it tastes like chicken. no, wait, that's possum. oaxaca tastes like mozzerella....or so they'd have you believe. check back here to find out.